


What You Do For Me

by aranrhodinhimring



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7026877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranrhodinhimring/pseuds/aranrhodinhimring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not charity if you get something in return - no matter how intangible it might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Do For Me

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my tumblr for the prompt 'value me'.

****In the beginning, Aerin could not come often. In the beginning, Brodda was greedy with her, kept her close to his side and in his bed. In the beginning, the Easterlings were suspicious and her own people were afraid.

In the beginning, Aerin was very much alone.

But as the first years passed, the incomers settled into dour complacency, and she and her own had the sharp edges of their fear dulled by time and weariness. She can chance, now, to leave the bounds of the lands about her, to wander through the woods and to the old stone house she remembers visiting as a girl, even without cover of darkness. Brodda knows she will return. Her visits are no longer quite so furtive, so fearful, though the wariness remains, will always remain.

It is Niënor she sees first, young and pretty, though her face is a little too thin, sharp at the cheekbones and chin. ‘Mother’s in the garden,’ she says, and Aerin imagines Morwen, digging through the earth to reach the much-needed food growing there, those long, strong fingers streaked brown with dirt. She brushes a hand across Niënor’s head, hair soft like silk even where it curls and tangles at the crown, and slips around towards the small, fenced plot of land.

Morwen is there, crouched over with her sleeves rolled up past her elbows, looking very much as she had in Aerin’s mind. Aerin sets the basket hanging over her arm on the ground, carrying the things she knows Morwen cannot manage herself – bread and the grain to make more, a little pot of honey she took from her own breakfast table, and dried spiced fish she would never have even imagined before her marriage.

The sound of it must catch Morwen’s attention, and she looks up, startled for a moment and then smiling, just a little, softening the stern set of her features. She looks tired, older than she had in the days Before, but still beautiful, and strong. Aerin feels a flush of warmth to look at her, and strides over, heedless of the damp turned earth under her feet, to press a firm kiss to her mouth, one which Morwen does not hesitate to return.

It is brief, nonetheless, and when they break apart Aerin leans her cheek against Morwen’s shoulder and sighs.

‘I wish I did not have to rely on your gifts,’ Morwen says, after a long, quiet moment. ‘It is a dangerous thing you do, and I can give you nothing in return.’

It is an argument they have had before, the iron of Morwen’s pride making itself known once more. Often enough Aerin seeks merely to reassure her that the dangers are not so great, that they are kin, after a sort (though not really, and a good thing too, considering the things they do in their rare moments of privacy), and that kin means it is not charity.

But today Aerin is in a strange mood and she will not stand for such comments. ‘Morwen, you do not know what you do for me. There is little enough good in my life, but there is you. If you were not here, if I could not have these brief times with you, it would be so much worse. Bringing you a little food when I can is nothing to being able to come here. And if I had no food to bring, I would still visit you, because you make this worth bearing. It was … very dreadful, for a long time, and the moments I could have here, with you, helped. Doing this for you is very little in the face of that.’

Morwen’s brow furrows and she exhales, a sharp, tired little gust of breath. ‘I just hope that you will not come to harm for it. And it seems a paltry thing, my company.’

‘Well it is not. Before, I was alone, and now I am not, and we must both make do with what we have to work with, as best we can. Now come, may I not help you here?’

‘In a moment.’

The next kiss is fiercer, longer, and as Aerin tangles a hand in her hair and stretches up to meet Morwen’s lips all the closer, she is glad for this proof that those times of deep, utter aloneness are ended.


End file.
